Best of Broadway in 2011

Surely, no other show has ever better made the case that you can have fun with absolutely anything, no matter how painful. But the bigger achievement of this hit musical from the creators of "South Park" and the composer of "Avenue Q" is that the most ruthless and outrageous satire can simultaneously be very sweet. Just when all of this poking fun at wholesome, irony-free Mormons starts to feel tiresome, the show cleverly spins on its own axis and reveals an inoculating sweet center to its hard satiric candy. And thus Mormonism, the main victim of this deconstruction, is, in a strange way, celebrated. With all those bases covered, "The Book of Mormon" is free to roll out a dizzying array of anarchic laughs, even as it argues for the importance of finding your own spiritual center. Here's a rare and brilliant show that gets to ring its doorbell and answer it too. At the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, 230 W. 49th St., New York; 212-239-6200 or bookofmormonbroadway.com

Surely, no other show has ever better made the case that you can have fun with absolutely anything, no matter how painful. But the bigger achievement of this hit musical from the creators of "South Park" and the composer of "Avenue Q" is that the most ruthless and outrageous satire can simultaneously be very sweet. Just when all of this poking fun at wholesome, irony-free Mormons starts to feel tiresome, the show cleverly spins on its own axis and reveals an inoculating sweet center to its hard satiric candy. And thus Mormonism, the main victim of this deconstruction, is, in a strange way, celebrated. With all those bases covered, "The Book of Mormon" is free to roll out a dizzying array of anarchic laughs, even as it argues for the importance of finding your own spiritual center. Here's a rare and brilliant show that gets to ring its doorbell and answer it too. At the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, 230 W. 49th St., New York; 212-239-6200 or bookofmormonbroadway.com

Especially when fused with regret, memories usually come with a soft gauze, faded but nagging. That quality infuses the Kennedy Center revival of this justly loved 1971 musical by James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim. Eric Schaeffer forged a gorgeous visual production wherein atrophied old showgirls and their onetime stage-door Johnnies wandered like ghosts through life's more painful second act. This was a production that shrewdly opened up the show's macro themes: the sense that the old American dreams are, for many, being torn down. But the show also exquisitely captured the back-and-forth pulls of resilient defiance and nostalgic submission in so many of our lives. The show's men, brilliantly played by Danny Burstein and Ron Raines, smoldered with the toxic mix of regret, achievement, arrogance and obliviousness so characteristic of the middle-aged male. Through Jan. 22 at the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway; 877-250-2929 or folliesbroadway.com (Moves to Los Angeles in 2012)

Especially when fused with regret, memories usually come with a soft gauze, faded but nagging. That quality infuses the Kennedy Center revival of this justly loved 1971 musical by James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim. Eric Schaeffer forged a gorgeous visual production wherein atrophied old showgirls and their onetime stage-door Johnnies wandered like ghosts through life's more painful second act. This was a production that shrewdly opened up the show's macro themes: the sense that the old American dreams are, for many, being torn down. But the show also exquisitely captured the back-and-forth pulls of resilient defiance and nostalgic submission in so many of our lives. The show's men, brilliantly played by Danny Burstein and Ron Raines, smoldered with the toxic mix of regret, achievement, arrogance and obliviousness so characteristic of the middle-aged male. Through Jan. 22 at the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway; 877-250-2929 or folliesbroadway.com (Moves to Los Angeles in 2012)